Elizabeth opened her eyes. It was 3AM.
Imagination shifts to the front of my mind.
“Anna.”
“I hear you.”
“You know what we’re doing here, don’t you?”
I nod my head. I do.
“You’re scared,” she said.
“I am.”
“Of what?”
I sighed. I knew what she was doing. She was making me pause, stop, and observe.
“You’re making me write.”
“We all need to write,” Imagination said.
“It’s who you are. Who we all are,” I assured her and signed again.
“The Healing Garden belongs to all of us.”
And then I understood. I can’t write this book as just me, Anna. They all want a turn.
And now I’m addressing you, the reader. Hi. First, thank you for picking up my book! I cannot begin to tell you how validating it is every time a reader chooses the writer. We peal back our vulnerabilities and we seek human connection. That is all each and every one of us is doing here. We all just want to connect. And none of us know how.
So… I sat down to write this book, “Finding Me,” when, mid-chapter, my Alter, Imagination took over and asked to write. I trust her and pasted her the reigns and she wrote. That was hers, “The Goddess and The Imp King.” That is her story.
“Finding Me” is actually my story. Anna’s. We all have our story. Our own way of seeing our lives. We all have different perspectives of what happened. Integration *laughing* intregration is just the act of getting everyone to agree what the contents are. I am my own little Council of Nicaea. *laughing*
So, I, the author, Anna, has just been informed that ALL of my Alters get to write. They each have their own story to tell. So… I’m posting this here live, every day, as it happens. Read at your leisure. And we’ll argue over the title later. *laughing*
Welcome to Multiple Personality Disorder. I can use my books to literally show you what my mental illnesses look like, for me. All this time… I had forgotten that I was a writer. How…
***
Turning back to Imagination, I shout, “Imagination! How!”
“How what?” she asked emerging from the shadows. Bergen behind her. Kallan on her others side. Angel in the corner.
“How could I ever… how could we forget that we are writers!? How the fuck did this happen!?”
“You had a lot to deal with… and… you never did stop writing.”
“Yes, I did! I haven’t written a book since 2015! Now you tell me why! Why!”
“Gentle, lass. Gentle,” Bergen soothed, his deep br-,”
“Sexy…” Bergen said.
“…brogue-” Anna typed.
“Sexy…” Bergen repeated.
“What?” Anna asked glancing at Bergen.
“I’m sexy,” he said. But that twinkle in his eye. That shift in the corner of his mouth.
“You want to kiss me again, lass. You know it.”
“Oh, fuck you! You did not just!” A memory of a previous blog… A memory of a certain night… I fell myself go pale.
“Oh, fuck yes. I did,” Bergen said with a wink and hooked his thumbs on his pants.
My eyes followed.
“Damn it!” I cried. “No!”
“Do you want to tell them, or shall I?” Bergen asked, his smile wider than ever.
I paused and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and inhaled. The world slowed down. I could see Bergen. My feelings. Angel. I looked at Angel.
She nodded.
I inhaled deeper and exhaled.
“I am scared,” I said.
“Let me, love,” Imagination said and stepping into the body… I felt my mind shift. A cloudiness fills my head and my body changes. I feel the shoulders and spine relax as if Imagination herself is slipping on my body…
“I’ll take it from here, love.” Hello, dear reader. This is Imagination now. What Anna is struggling to say are things I’ve already seen. She hasn’t had time to process what’s going on, so let me explain in her stead.
We are going to show you Mental… Bergen. Did we do this? We already did this?
“Yeah, lass,” Bergen said. “We did this.”
Imagination smiled. “So you, Bergen, to address a Goddess as “lass.” I released a giggle and continued. How do you write a book with multiple authors all wanting their turn at the pen?
“This is it,” Kallan said. “This is what we wanted to show them. This write now. What it feels like. What this girl has going on in her head 24/7. They moment all of us wake up. The moment we, one-by-one fall asleep. Those nights Imagination or Bergen talk non-stop through the night.
We all want to connect. But many of us haven’t been allowed to. Joanna… Anna, for short, hasn’t let us talk to anyone for decades.
So we’re all very eager to get our time and shine. So… Angela. She is the core. She was last seen at 8 years old when a client in her grandfather’s gunshop waved a gun at her and telling her that “if she were my daughter, I’d teach her her place.” All she did was tell the room that she was a vegetarian and believed in animal’s rights.
We woke up the next morning as someone else. No memory at all about the screaming. No memory of being a vegetarian. No memory of having a stranger wave a gun at us. But, we did start having a nightmare. A single, horror-ful night terror of these men all in a room surrounding me. They are my height. We can look them in the eye
Not me.
Not now Bergen
And they’re my equal. Then suddenly, it’s black. They’re standing over us in the room. No doors. No windows. Just moonlight through the ceiling. Tall cloaked men all towering over me and screaming.
Night after night. Every night… for 32 years.
And my body… Every time I took it in, every time I consumed food, my body transformed my repulsion for eating meat, into my stomach. Into my throat. Into my gut. I would feel so sick. Eating made me sick. And for 32 years, I wouldn’t know why.
“It’s the healing,” Imagination said. “The more we recovered, the more we, Anna’s Alters were able to shift things inside her head to heal her. We worked as a team.”
“Self Love,” Joanna said. “It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen… I just loved them. I just wanted to protect them.”
“An interview!” Kallan said. We all exchanged looks.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking-” Bergen asked.
“Yes, Bergen! Of course we’re all thinking what you’re thinking! Ass!” Kallan screamed.
Imagination and Joanna laughed.
“We don’t need William,” Kallan said. “We have us.”
“Who was William anyway?” asked Joanna.
“He was me,” said Anna out loud as I’m writing this.
“The Conscious Mind,” Imagination said. “Yes. Perhaps we should start with the Cast.”
Bergen laughed, “I think every reader out there just gave one giant sigh of relief.”
Imagination smiled. She knew what she had to do. “Alright. Let me take you into the mind of a Multiple. This is a Dome. This room where we are talking right now. This is the ForeMind.”
“Spaceship!” Bergen said.
“It’s the ForeMind!”
“Och, come on lass! If you’re going to imagine it up then make it interesting! And I want a Spaceship!”
“Fine!” Imagination said, “This is our spaceship.”
We all looked around at the stainless steel floor. The steel walls. Some steel containers.
“We’re in the cargo hold,” Bergen said.
Everyone laughed.
“Okay,” said Imagination…
“Wait,” Kallan said. “What is our word count up to?”
“1,275 words,” said Anna.
“Let’s start a new chapter,” Joanna said. “A lot was covered in this one.”